"Our entire family has been destroyed because of that boy and now the court has assured he will live all his life. Why don't they give him the death penalty? He killed my daughter, my husband died due to that shock and my son had to quit his studies to provide for the family. He must get the death penalty," said a teary-eyed Roshni Rathi, mother of Preeti who died in 2013 after being attacked with sulphuric acid by her former neighbour Ankur Panwar. Roshni was reacting to the Bombay High Court commuting his death penalty to life imprisonment.

On Wednesday, HC upheld the conviction of Ankur in the 2013 case. He had been given the death penalty in 2016 for flinging sulphuric acid on Preeti on May 2, 2013. A division bench of justices B P Dharmadhikari and P D Naik partly allowed the appeal filed by Ankur, challenging the death penalty awarded to him by a special court in 2016, and commuted it to life imprisonment.